CINEMATIC REVELATIONS allows me the luxury of writing, editing and archiving my film and television reviews. Some reviews appeared initially in "The Commercial Dispatch" and "The Planet Weekly" and then later in the comment archives at the Internet Movie Database. IMDB.COM, however, imposes a limit on both the number of words and the number of times that an author may revise their comments. I hope that anybody who peruses these expanded reviews will find them useful.

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Thursday, June 7, 2012

“Men in Black 3” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) may be Tommy Lee Jones’ last “Men
in Black” movie. The Oscar winning
“Fugitive” actor makes what amounts to a glorified cameo in the second
sequel. He shows up for about a quarter
of an hour during the first act of this amusing, but tonally uneven farce and
then disappears until about the last ten minutes of act three. Presumably,
Jones wasn’t agile enough to impersonate himself as a younger man in act two of
this lively sequel. Consequently, “Men in Black” director Barry Sonnenfeld cast
Josh Brolin as a younger Agent K for the contrived time travel plot in “Tropic
Thunder” scenarist Etan Cohen’s inventive but convoluted screenplay. Things seem considerably more realistic in
“Men in Black 3” as a vindicative villain takes advantage of time travel to
trip back to July 1969 and knock off Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) mere moments
before the historic Apollo Moon launch.
Meaning, since Agent K would no longer exist, Agent K couldn’t have
recruited Agent J. Remember, in “Men in
Black” (1997), Agent K recruited NYPD detective James Darrell Edwards III (Will
Smith of “Independence Day”) for his fleet-footed pursuit of an alien. “Men in
Black 3” takes some outrageous liberties with time travel that haven’t been
handled in such a zany fashion.

Basically, “Men in Black 3” resembles the classic fantasy
film “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946) where James Stewart learns about the chaos
that will ensue if he commits suicide. Unlike the James Stewart hero, Agent K
either must survive a murder attempt on his life or chaos will engulf the
Earth. A buffed-up Mick Jigger
look-alike bad man named Boris the Animal has dreamed about killing Agent
K. Bad-tempered Boris is an alien who
has goggles instead of eyeballs, gnarly-looking teeth, a Darth Vader baritone
voice, and multi-toed feet, and harbors a deadly crab-like critter in the palm
of his hand. Boris likes to discharge
deadly thorns from his hand, and his trademark line of dialogue is "Let's
agree to disagree." Unless Agent J can run interference for Agent K, the
world as we know it is doomed. It seems
that Agent K was instrumental in averting an alien invasion of Earth with a
small gizmo that gives off an emerald glow back in 1969. He had to plant the device atop the Apollo
Moon rocket so it could be boosted into space.
Of course, Boris both before and after the Lunar Max escape turns up to
complicate Agent K’s renewed efforts to save the planet. They battle like titans atop the gantry.

“Men in Black” opens in Lunar Max, a maximum security prison
on the Moon, built to confine the worst scum in the galaxy. Beastly Boris the
Animal (Jemaine Clement of “Dinner for Schmucks”) thwarts an army of heavily
armed guards with the help of a woman carrying a pink cake, and breaks out of
the slammer. Just when the guards think
they have Boris cornered, this larger-than-life villain surprises them with a
stunt that disperses the guards and staggers the imagination. Now, freed after 40 years of captivity, Boris
decides to pay back the man who not only put him behind bars but also blew off
part of his left arm. Of course, Boris’
quarry is none other than resourceful Agent K.
Agent K's only regret is that he didn't ice Boris when he had the
opportunity. Mysteriously, Agent K has
vanished without a trace, and Agent J gets the shock of his life at MIB
Headquarters when he learns that Agent K has been dead for 40 years.

The original “Men in Black” offered a pleasant
change-of-pace for science fiction film fans.
Essentially, this silly, “Far Side” type satire cleverly combined the
police procedural TV show “Dragnet” with the “Star Wars” cantina scene. Sonnenfeld has helmed all three “Men in
Black” movies. Along the way, he has
made some changes. Not only does
Sonnenfeld eliminate Zed, but he also has replaced Zed with a younger
woman. Essentially, Zed (Rip Torn) has
died, and Agent K delivers a cryptic but dispassionate eulogy. Agent O (Emma Thompson) replaces Zed. Later,
we learn that Agent K and Agent O were romantically involved. Unfortunately,
the filmmakers fail to make the threat of a standard-issue, alien invasion of
Earth plot seem exciting. Sonnenfeld and
Cohen do everything to raise the stakes in this outlandish sequel. Although some changes are obvious and
accounted for, others are not so clear-cut, especially the liberties that they
take with time travel.

The biggest change involves the scope of “MIB 3.” Although the adversary is an alien, little
about him prompts laughs. The decision
to go into the past makes "Men in Black 3" different from the
previous two films. Sonnenfeld and Cohen
allow Boris to take things right down to the wire. “Men in Black 3” is the tail chasing the dog,
but it is so energetic that you can ignore its lapses in logic. Brolin and Smith are charismatic enough even
when the plot stumbles from one big set-piece to another. Some critics have skewered the logic of the
time travel plot. How can two characters
and their counterparts inhabit the same time and setting without negating their
alter-egos? For that matter, how is it
that Agent J can remain a member of the Men in Black if Agent K weren’t around
to recruit him? After Sonnenfeld and
Cohen resolve the end-of-the-world plot, they cap off “Men in Black 3” with a
hopelessly contrived ending that brings the franchise full circle. The closure that comes with the return of
Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K has an eerie sense of finality. Josh Brolin delivers
a brilliant performance as Agent K, and the ambitious plot resembles a sci-fi,
James Bond escapade rather than a goofy actioneer. Happily, “Men in Black 3” boasts some
ingenious gadgets, like a motorcycle that consists of one giant wheel that the
rider sits inside while driving and jet-packs that resemble chrome-plated
Gemini capsules. Comparatively, “Men in
Black 3” surpasses “Men in Black 2,” but lacks the spontaneity of “Men in
Black.”